The Prophet by Amanda Stevens

I received this book courtesy of the publisher from NetGalley.

Once I’d finished The Kingdom, the second book in the Graveyard Queen series, I was already antsy waiting for the third book. I practically trolled NetGalley waiting for this title to be made available! Again, the acceptance email was met with a flutter of excitement this intensity of which is really something that maybe I shouldn’t be admitting to! Oh the joys of favourite authors / series!

I was in the middle of another book when I was able to download this one. I briefly toyed with the idea of finishing that one first but that was quickly discarded. The lure of Amelia Gray and the promise of more John Devlin proved to be more than enough to tempt me away from previous reads and leave me ensconced in my chair all evening, oblivious to anything going on around me!

Information:

Title: The Prophet

Series: The Graveyard Queen #3

Author: Amanda Stevens

Publisher: Mira

Target Audience: Adult

Pages: 400

Chapters: 41 + epilogue

PoV: 1^st person

Tense : Past tense

Story : My name is Amelia Gray. 

I am the Graveyard Queen, a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. My father passed down four rules to keep me safe and I’ve broken every last one. A door has opened and evil wants me back. 

In order to protect myself, I’ve vowed to return to those rules. But the ghost of a murdered cop needs my help to find his killer. The clues lead me to the dark side of Charleston—where witchcraft, root doctors and black magic still flourish—and back to John Devlin, a haunted police detective I should only love from afar. 

Now I’m faced with a terrible choice: follow the rules or follow my heart.

(from Goodreads)

Thoughts and impressions: This third book brings Amelia back to the setting of the first one. A lot of familiar names and faces crop up with a good number of the (surviving) characters from The Restorer making a reappearance, however brief. Reading it, it almost felt as though the events second book was merely an interlude as although the events are alluded to, they didn’t play a part in this plot.

The notion of the malevolent entity that Amelia calls Evil was introduced as being the consequence she has to face for ignoring her father’s rules. There was, however, no mention of it in this book. The ghosts made a comeback – though with things revolving around John Devlin again that was to be expected. That said, there is an unexpected surprise involving Shani’s ghost. It’s a shame that Evil wasn’t expanded on – I would have liked to have learnt more about it.

Traditional African spiritual beliefs are also introduced in this book in the form of Mariama Goodwine’s cousin. An awful lot of research must have gone into putting all of this together and I was utterly fascinated by all the lore. It was really interesting and a good look into the beliefs surrounding death in another – very different – culture.

The Prophet chronicles Amelia’s investigation into who killed the cop we met as a ghost in The Restorer. He wants release and he’s willing to go so far as to haunt Amelia to get her to do this for him. What’s more, it would seem that whatever message Shani is desperately trying to communicate to her father is also of great importance and the plot soon becomes a mix of unravelling the both mysteries.

This is another way that this third book is very different from the other two. In those, Amelia spends a lot of her time working in graveyards but comparatively little time was spent in one in this book. This meant in turn that there were fewer spine-tingling moments. I’m not sure that my adrenaline really got pumping while reading this one as it did when I was caught up in the other two. Rather, I was pushing on in the mad desire to see where the relationship between Amelia and Devlin would lead. I wouldn’t say that this is a bad thing, just different. As such, it may not work for everyone, especially readers who were more caught up in the graveyard aspect of the books than the romance subplot.

John Devlin is of course back. The scenes between him and Amelia were everything I could have hoped for and more. I was right when I said that Thane Asher was just a diversion to allow Amelia to grow and that it would all be about Devlin in the long run. Even Amelia admits this to herself, and later Devlin, this time around. Of course, his dead wife’s spectre looming over them does tend to put a stopper on things.

The truth about who Mariama really was comes out bit by bit here. Unfortunately, what we know of her (that she’s a malevolent spirit unwilling to pass on, using the ghost of her child as a tether to the realm of the living and intent on making Devlin’s life a misery) clashes with what various people tell us of her from before her death (that everybody loved her). I just couldn’t quite bring myself to buy this. It would have been made more believable if there had been even just one character who hadn’t thought the world of Mariama at some point.

As for the mystery itself, I found that I’d unravelled this one as of early on in the book (which wasn’t the case in either of the first two books) and there weren’t ever really any big, unexpected shocks. A number of things did go unanswered, though, such as why Darius Goodwine chose to return now. In fact, a lot about Darius Goodwine remains unclear. Some of it is understandable, such as the mystery surrounding his traditional practises and the sway he holds over people, but it would have been nice if some things were made clear, such as whether or not he was actually a bad guy.

The ending was the only thing that I didn’t like about the book. It felt uncomfortably rushed. There had been a good few slower moments leading up to this finale, but when it finally took place, a huge number of things seemed to all happen at once – too many for me to fully take everything in and I was left feeling dissatisfied, much as I hate to say it.

I had thought that The Graveyard Queen was a trilogy for some reason, but having finished this book it is blatantly obvious to me now that there are still any number of questions left to be explored. I’m definitely looking forward to where things will take Amelia and Devlin next.

Style: Amanda Stevens has a great, strong voice in Amelia. As soon as she starts, I get hopelessly sucked in.

Final verdict: The Prophet turned out to be a very different ride to that of the first two books but it holds its own against them, even surpassing them in some respects. I was caught up from the first until the very end. Again, I’m left longing for more. 5 stars

Extra notes: Some bad language. Sex is present.

Follow Friday - 06/04/2012

Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee and Alison can read. Each week participants are given a prompt. This week's is: 

Q: Have you ever bought a book BECAUSE of a bad review?

In all likelihood, I have but I'm not sure I can name one off the top of my head. When I'm browing for new reads on GR then I'll often read the 1 or 2-star reviews before I read the good reviews. I did read a bad review of Cinder that only served to solidify my determination to read it, but it had been on my TBR for a long time before that so I'm not sure whether that counts.

How about you? Leave a comment with a link to your blog and I'll be sure to pop over and leave a comment in return when I get home this evening!

Happy hopping and have a great weekend! 

Get A Taste: What Angels Fear

Tara of Basically Books and I often read very different books but sometimes find interesting new books to potentially add to the ever-growing monsters that our TBR piles have morphed into. However, we know that we do not have 100% the same taste and we wanted another way of getting a look at these books...

Do you ever feel like getting a bit of a taster for a book you’ve been thinking of reading but aren’t fully sold on yet? Do you feel like sharing a taster for your current read with the world? Well, here’s your chance.

Each week the random number generator will pick a number between 1 and 100 for books with pages or 1 and 25% for ebooks. We figured that these numbers would keep us out of spoiler territory. Open your book to the specified place and pick a paragraph. Share it with the world!

The numbers for this week are:

Page 12 for books

21% for ebooks

My book:

Click image to go to GoodReads page

She lay on her back, sprawled in an obscene posture against the polished marble steps that led up to the chapel's alter. He saw bare thighs, spread wide and gleaming white in the lamplight. A froth of lace-edged what had once been a fine satin flounce, torn now, and stained with the same darkness that stained her thighs. Eyes wide and glassy stared at her him from beneath a head of golden curls tipped back at an unnatural angle. At first he thought the front of her gown was black, but as he inched closer, he saw the gaping gashes across her throat and he understood.
I've had this book for a while now - at least a couple of years. I bought it when I first got into my historical murder mystery phase, which is now long past but I still enjoy a good book of that genre from time to time. This one is my read where a snatch a few pages here and there when I can. I'm enjoying it so far. Sebastian's weird - like a cat with yellow eyes and amazing reflexes. Apparently it comes from a real human mutation. Fascinating!
(For those who left a comment this week, I will get back to you at the weekend. New job means very little time on week nights!)

Do you want to join in too? Here’s how:

Step 1: Copy and paste the Get A Taste image.

Step 2: Copy and paste our intro or write your own but it must link back to both of our blogs.

Step 3: Find the designated page for the week.

Step 4: Type out a paragraph or so from your book.

Step 5: Post it and share it!

We would appreciate it if you'd leave a comment letting us know where we can find your post. We'll be sure to pop on by and leave a comment!

Thanks and have fun!

Blood Bound by Rachel Vincent

This book found its way onto my TBR at some point last spring. At the time I was rocking back and forth between urban fantasy and historical mystery and this book’s blurb really appealed to me. I found the book itself in one of those 3 for 2 offers at the end of summer. I snapped it up at that time then I did my usual: popped it on my living room bookshelf and promptly forgot about it until I just picked it up at random.

I know this, that and the other about the author’s other books and it left me unsure as to whether she would appeal to my tastes. Then again, the book is published by Mira and they also publish some of my favourite authors so I kept hope!

Information:

Title: Blood Bound

Series: Unbound #1

Author: Rachel Vincent

Publisher: Mira

Target Audience: Adult

Pages: 463

Chapters: 30

PoV: 1^st person

Tense: Past tense

Story: Bound by blood, condemned by fate 

As a bloodtracker, Liv is extremely powerful. And in a world where power is a commodity that can get you killed, Liv's learnt to survive by her own rules. 

Rule number one? Trust no one. 

But when a friend's daughter goes missing, Liv is bound by a potent magical oath. She can't rest until the child is safe. 
And that means trusting her dangerous ex, Cam. 

A sinister prophecy tells that she and Cam will be the death of each other, yet Liv's tired of being a slave to destiny. She's ready to play the forces controlling her world at their own game. 

No matter what the cost.

Thoughts and impressions: Well, I can say with absolute certainty that my worries were completely and utterly unfounded. Within the first few pages, I knew that this was the sort of urban fantasy that would sweep me off my feet. And sweep me off my feet it did! As I said, the first chapter told me that this would be the sort of book that I love but it took a couple more chapters until I was so caught up in the action that there was no way to extricate myself until I’d finished the book.

The synopsis is a little misleading. Everything mentioned in it does take place, yes, but the action is really kick-started by the murder of this same friend’s husband, which precipitates the kidnapping of her child much later on in the story.

Anne, the friend, and Liv have a contract along with two other friends that requires them to help in any way they can if it is asked of them. In the context of the novel, should they refuse to help their body will start to systematically shut down until the heart stops beating. Certainly far from a comfortable way to die.

As Anne specifically asks Liv for help, there’s not much Liv can do other than accept. When Anne expands this request that she work with Cam – the man she’s been avoiding due to a foretelling that they will kill each other – Liv is catapulted into a world of syndicate secrets that she’d done her very best to steer clear of all these years.

I’m not entirely sure that I bought the relationship between Liv and Cam. Obviously the romance was already there so there was no budding relationship. She walked out on him six years ago, though, and six years is a very long time to not move on from a three year relationship. Stukkm their interactions were often intense and leant a very different aspect to the book.

The story is written in the first person and follow’s both Liv and Cam’s PoVs. I would have liked to have seen Cam’s reaction to how things played out in the climax but the story stayed in Liv’s PoV at that point. At first, I transferred this hope to getting this from him in the next book in the series but the sequel is going to follow Kori, another of the four friends contracted to help each other. Then again, maybe Kori’s story will also showcase Cam and Liv a bit just as she featured in theirs. A girl can hope! I’d say that Cam and Liv’s story is far from over, though, so maybe things will come back to them in a future book. I certainly hope so.

Occasionally, the characters were somewhat slow on the uptake. Not too-stupid-to-live slow, but slow nonetheless. I’d find that I had pegged the next reveal as obvious but Liv or Cam (or both) would continue to blunder about in blissful ignorance until the obvious really would not be ignored anymore. When I see things like this, it makes me wonder whether I’m sometimes just as slow when faced with the facts. I’d guess that I probably am but it can still be frustrating in novels when the characters are blind to what’s staring them right in the face. As I said, at least the characters weren’t stupid – just a bit slow at putting two and two together.

The world that Rachel Vincent has dreamt up here is fascinating. There’s no specific era or setting (other than it being in the US) but I’m tempted to imagine it being in the near future somewhere near the East Coast. I don’t know why, that’s just where I situated it in my head.

In this reality, certain people have what are called Skills and these Skills have led to the rise of two crimes bosses in “the City”. It was very mafia-esque in this dog-eat-dog world where allegiances collide quite spectacularly at times. I love the idea that a tattoo on your arm could bind you so tightly to a syndicate that any attempt to go against your boss’s orders would result in your body killing itself. Certainly a very bleak image of life though I have no doubts that this is what organised crime would become in such a world.

I really enjoyed my foray into Liv’s life and I hope that the series will return there in a future book. As it is, I’m looking forward to learning more about Kori later this year.

Style: I’m not entirely sure that Cam and Liv’s voices are very distinct, a pitfall of having multiple first person narrators. This didn’t matter to me as I was reading, though. I was too engrossed to care.

Final verdict: The book exceeded all of my expectations. I loved it! 5 stars

Extra notes: Both bad language and sex present.

Blog Tour: Night Sky by Jolene Perry

I was invited to join the blog tour for Night Sky by Tribute Books. Thank you! I enjoyed this opportunity to read and review a book well outside of my comfort zone.

Information:

Title: Night Sky

Author: Jolene Perry

Publisher: Tribute Books

Target Audience: YA

Length: 247 pages

PoV: 1^st person

Tense: Past tense

Story: Girl I’ve loved, girl I’m falling for. Now that they’re both in view, the problem is clear. 

After losing Sarah, the friend he’s loved, to some other guy, Jameson meets Sky. Her Native American roots, fluid movements, and need for brutal honesty become addictive fast. This is good. Jameson needs distraction – his dad leaves for another woman, his mom’s walking around like a zombie, and Sarah’s new boyfriend can’t keep his hands off of her. 

As he spends time with Sky and learns about her village, her totems, and her friends with drums - she's way more than distraction. Jameson's falling for her fast. 

But Sky’s need for honesty somehow doesn’t extend to her life story – and Jameson just may need more than his new girl to keep him distracted from the disaster of his senior year.

Thoughts and impressions: This is a case of a book that lies outside my comfort zone. It is fairly rare that I will read books about every day teen issues nowadays (though I did enjoy them when I was a teen myself), and it would seem that this is for a reason. Last month I read a similar book and had a similar experience. In both cases I found myself faced with a book that I recognised as being a good read with a good message, but one that just didn’t really fit my own personal tastes.

I guess that this is really a coming of age story. It was a very interesting decision to choose to write it from a male point of view. There are too few stories of this genre out there with male narrators, though I suppose that this could in part be due to a very restricted male audience for such books. This said, it was a different experience to see a boy tackling issues such as how and when to go forward – when to take that next step in a relationship, when it’s the right time to take things to the physical level for the first time.

It has to be said that, for me, the synopsis was a little misleading. When I read “the disaster of his senior year”, I expected Jameson to be tackling issues in school as well as outside school. I never really felt that his school year was threatened, or that there was ever a point where his high school career was under threat. That said, I am not American so I have no idea just how devastating it would be to be told you will potentially not be allowed to walk at your graduation. I doubt it’s such a big deal that it could be considered that your school life is falling apart, though.

Really, everything goes well for Jameson in school. He’s pretty much on a high as he’s a very strong swimmer competing for the school team with no small modicum of success. Sometimes things spill over from his home life and he seems to spend a day or two moping about, but I seem to remember that being pretty much normal!

Other than the school thing, I quite liked Jameson as a character as he grew and realised that things are not always black and white and there’s a whole range of shades of grey in-between. Sky brought out the best in him when he just comes across her on a street corner (she’s walking home, not ‘working’) and she insists that if they are to be friends then he needs to be honest about absolutely everything. It is through his relationship with her and the honesty that she demands on him that he realises just how dishonest things have been up until this point.

Take Sarah for example, the girl Jameson is “in love with”. The two of them have been best friends for three years. In all that time, he’s secretly liked her but never plucked up the nerve to tell her about it. Now, Sarah’s got a boyfriend – the school’s resident jerk who likes to check out all the ladies. It takes a while but eventually Jameson realises that Sarah’s made her choice: it wasn’t him and he needs to let her make her own mistakes even if it means that their friendship won’t survive. He was never brutally honest with her and now that he’s decided that honesty is the road to take, she doesn’t want to hear his opinions. It’s ironic really, isn’t it? Ignorance (or turning a blind eye as the case may be) really is bliss.

Sky herself is a wonderful character. True, she keeps secrets from Jameson when she demands honesty from him so she’s rather hypocritical in that respect, but she has her reasons. Though I don’t necessarily agree with those reasons, I do understand where she’s coming from and when her secret is revealed my heart broke for her. I can’t even begin to imagine the mental trials and tribulations that such a situation would incur. I liked how open Sky seemed to be; how she was willing to take a chance on a boy who obviously still harboured feelings for another girl; how she forced herself to swallow her fears and face life with a positive outlook.

The events with Jameson’s father also lead to some very powerful scenes. Personally, I wouldn’t have reacted in the same way – while Jameson gives way to his anger, I’m one of those people who swallow everything, simmer in the anger and close a door that it takes a lot to get me to reopen. Consequently, I did find myself frustrated with his actions at times but only because this is written in the first person – I – and “I” would never react in such a manner.

It was also an interesting decision to mix up cultures. Jameson is pretty much American through and through despite his Mexican heritage, but Sky is Native American and she comes from a community in Alaska. I liked the little hints about how things work in her community, their beliefs and how they go about their daily life. It’s fairly rare that I will ever read a book that contains such titbits about Native American life (but only because they’re not featured in the genres that I prefer) so this was a nice change for me.

At the end of the day, this book was a really good, very well told story that will end up with many fans. But it wasn’t the story for me. I prefer what I read to have some form of threat throughout while this story was more the idea of coming to terms with life and growing up. It was a well-crafted piece and conveys a good message about being honest with not only the world around you, but also yourself.

Style: On the whole very good with very few typos having made it through. The author uses an incorrect past conjugation of the verb "to lie". It’s: to lie // lay // has lain although some speakers use laid instead of lay. This author used "lied", which is another verb entirely! (If you’ve ever learnt a foreign language, you’ll recognise that form of learning irregular verbs. Of course, I learnt English as a foreign language (as well as it being my mother tongue) so I had all those irregular forms drilled into me.) So it shouldn’t be "Sky and I lied on the bed" but "Sky and I lay on the bed".

Final verdict: As I mentioned, this is a well-crafted story with a strong message. If I was rating it on its merits as a story, then I’d give it 4, maybe even 5 stars. From a distance, I recognise that it is a very good book. As it is, I’m rating it on how it worked for me, and I found that I was not always interested in how events were progressing due to a lack of threat to the plot. For me, it was a 3 stars read.

Extra notes: Bad language is present. Sex is not but there are a lot of issues about sex brought to the surface.

The book around the net:
Night Sky website
Night Sky on GoodReads


Buy the book:
Kindle
Nook
Smashwords
PDF

The author:

Jolene grew up in Wasilla, Alaska. She graduated from Southern Utah University with a degree in political science and French, which she used to teach math to middle schoolers.

After living in Washington, Utah and Las Vegas, she now resides in Alaska with her husband, and two children. Aside from writing, Jolene sews, plays the guitar, sings when forced, and spends as much time outside as possible.

She is also the author of The Next Door Boys and the upcoming Knee Deep.

Jolene Perry's website

Jolene Perry's blog

Find the author:

On Facebook

On Twitter

On GoodReads

The Publisher:
Tribute Books' website
Tribute Books' Twitter
Tribute Books' Facebook
Tribute Books Blog Tours on Facebook

The Cover Wars: The Demon's Lexicon

Tara of Basically Books and I decided to get together to do a weekly meme where we would compare covers of the UK editions of books with those of the US editions.

The aim of this is to just have a bit of fun. We put ourselves in the position where we see both of these books side by side in the bookstore. Which would we choose? Why that one and not the other?

This week Tara picked a book that I've heard of but never paid much attention to. Maybe I should get around to paying it some attention. Tara certainly thinks I should!

US cover                                             UK cover

Rea says: These two covers couldn’t be more different. I’m not sure how much I like the smudged style of the UK cover art. But then on the US cover there’s just too much going on – plus that is some majorly weird lighting on his upper body; he looks malformed! Scott Westerfield’s quote on the US version is much more likely to garner my interest than the one by Cassandra Clare on the UK version, though I realise that I may be in the minority there. After some contemplation, I’ve realised that the UK cover art just doesn’t appeal to me so I’m going with the US cover this week.

Tara says: I have read and loved the UK version of this book. The font they used for the title of the UK version is very interesting and I love how you only see the character’s face. Also those birds seem very interesting. The US version shows the character’s whole body. Not to mention that it has more background and detail to it. The font of the title doesn't stand out in this case and I don't see any birdies. (I suddenly have a fascination with seeing birdies.) I think this one is such a hard choice but in the end I think I may go for the UK version because, to me, it stands out more. 

Score:


Week 11:     US: 2     UK: 5     Draw: 3

Do you want to join in too? Here’s how:

Step 1: Copy and paste the Cover Wars image.

Step 2: Copy and paste our intro or write your own but it must link back to both of our blogs.

Step 3: Copy and paste the US and UK cover images.

Step 4: Compare the two.

Step 5: Either use our score or keep your own score.

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Thanks and have fun!

The Other Life by Susanne Winnacker

I don’t remember how I came across this book but it came onto my radar at some point late last year and I soon put it on pre-order. If I’m honest, I think I was probably attracted to the cover more than the description in this case. I say this because it was only after I’d ordered it that I read a review mentioning zombies and I reacted with a moment of pure horror. The trauma of The Forest of Hands and Teeth apparently lingers on. Of course, if you actually pay attention to the synopsis, it’s fairly obvious that there’s going to be some sort of mutant creature involved. So I put my YA zombie prejudices to one side, picked up the book and hoped for the best.

Informtation:

Title: The Other Side

Series: The Other Life #1

Author: Susanne Winnacker

Publisher: Usborne

Target Audience: YA

Pages: 320

PoV: 1^st person

Tense: Past tense

Story: 3 years, 1 month, 1 week and 6 days since I’d seen daylight. One-fifth of my life. 98,409,602 seconds since the heavy, steel door had fallen shut and sealed us off from the world 

Sherry has lived with her family in a sealed bunker since things went wrong up above. But when they run out of food, Sherry and her dad must venture outside. There they find a world of devastation, desolation...and the Weepers: savage, mutant killers. 

When Sherry's dad is snatched, she joins forces with gorgeous but troubled Joshua - an Avenger, determined to destroy the Weepers. 

But can Sherry keep her family and Joshua safe, when his desire for vengeance threatens them all?

(from Goodreads)

Thoughts and impressions: First of all, this book is vastly superior to the story in The Forest of Hands and Teeth, at least for me. TFoHaT scarred me, this one entertained me. I didn’t want to cause anyone bodily harm when I finished this book – yey! However, that does not mean that it’s great.

I liked the idea of what the Weepers are (the Weepers being the transformed humans who hunt other humans to eat their flesh). I liked that there were some that were more animal than human but others that had retained their intelligence. I liked that they were still reminiscent of typical zombies with their flesh falling off. I really liked the conspiracy theory introduced, though unfortunately it was only introduced at the end and didn’t receive much attention as the author set the scene for the second book, which will (I suspect) look into it more. This said, I’m not entirely sure that this book was the time to introduce that. It felt a bit rushed and it was a completely different note to everything that had come before.

I also liked how Winnacker took the time to set the scene of how her world ended up the way it did. Usually in dystopians, the author just presents the broken world and the reader has no choice but to go with the flow. In The Other Life, the protagonist, Sherry, lived through the breakdown of her society so the reader is also aware of what went wrong where and why, what role those in power played in it all, and what the results of the decisions made are for the survivors. Before each chapter, there is a short excerpt of a scene in Sherry’s life before things went wrong. These provided a contrast with the bleak present that Sherry finds herself in and I thought that these were a really engaging touch.

The relationship between Joshua and Sherry is not rushed or diminished by claims of undying love between the two. The start of it seemed a bit advanced but to say that they’d just met but this can be justified by the very different world and the fact that Joshua had just saved Sherry’s life. It becomes calmer after that and is allowed to evolve at a very natural pace, which is something that I really appreciate in books. The novel is written in Sherry’s voice and she admits that she’s unsure of what goes on in Joshua’s head – considering his past and how he put her in danger a couple of times because of his drive to hunt the hunters, I can understand her reluctance that shadows her attraction to him.

My main gripe with the book is that it felt rather… I’m not sure of the word for it. It’s very short and I felt as though I didn’t really get the full story I wished for. I really enjoyed what I got but I felt that it focused a lot on the action to the detriment of the character development. I wanted to get to know all of the characters better. Rachel, in particular, is named as being one of the characters that will be central in the next book and I’m not entirely sure whether she even gets one line of dialogue in this book. She’s just a presence. I have no idea who she is or what her history is.

A few times, Sherry mentions how many seconds it’s been since event X happened. I’m not entirely sure that I bought that. Either she’s incredibly good at maths or it’s too forced. I could never work out how many seconds it’s been since I did X, Y or Z off the top of my head. It was an interesting touch but it was overused and lost its impact as numbers were rattled off for various things on a fairly frequent basis.

Finally, Sherry mentions that her grandma never stops knitting and has not run out of wool in all the time since they went underground. I’m not entirely sure the author realises how much wool can be used while knitting. I can easily get through a 100g ball in 5 hours, and I’m not that fast at knitting so grandma would be getting through at least 2 balls a day. I highly doubt that they will have taken so much wool with them (if grandma got through two 100g balls a day she would have used up 2278 balls by the day they run out of food and Sherry mentions that she still has a lot of wool to get through). But maybe I’m nit-picking here.

The idea behind the story is really inspired and has an awful lot of promise. The hints of what’s to come in the second book are tantalising. I feel like the book could have been better but I still enjoyed it for what it was. It has restored some of my faith in YA zombie books!

Style: Fairly simple but very engaging. I finished the book in only a couple of hours and part of that was due to how drawn in I was by the style.

Final verdict: I really enjoyed what the story offered but I found myself wishing for something more from it too. I read it very quickly and would have preferred it to be a bit longer with more focus on character growth. I will definitely be reading the sequel. 3 stars.

Extra notes: Some bad language. No sex.